He sat down, as he spoke, cross-legged, and the last thing Jerry saw, as he snapped out the light, was the lean, intense face and the blazing eyes of Ronicky Doone.  Decidedly this was not a fellow to trifle with.  If he trembled for himself and Ronicky, he could also spare a shudder for what would happen to Frederic Fernand, if Ronicky got away.  In the meantime the light was out, and the darkness sat heavily beside and about them, with that faint succession of inaudible breathing sounds which are sensed rather than actually heard.

“Is there anything that we can do?” asked Jerry suddenly.  “It’s all right to sit down and argue and worry, but isn’t it foolish, Ronicky?”

“How come?”

“I mean it in this way.  Sometimes when you can’t solve a problem it’s very easy to prove that it can’t be solved by anyone.  That’s what I can prove now, but why waste time?”

“Have we got anything special to do with our time?” asked Ronicky dryly.

“Well, my proof is easy.  Here we are in hard-pan dirt, without any sort of a tool for digging.  So we sure can’t tunnel out from the sides, can we?”

“Looks most like we can’t,” said Ronicky sadly.

“And the only ways that are left are the ends.”

“That’s right.”

“But one end is the unfinished part of the tunnel; and, if you think we can do anything to the steel door—­”

“Hush up,” said Ronicky.  “Besides, there ain’t any use in you talking in a whisper, either.  No, it sure don’t look like we could do much to that door.  Besides, even if we could, I don’t think I’d go.  I’d rather take a chance against starvation than another trip to fat Fernand’s place.  If I ever enter it again, son, you lay to it that he’ll get me bumped off, mighty pronto.”

Jerry Smith, after a groan, returned to his argument.  “But that ties us up, Ronicky.  The door won’t work, and it’s worse than solid rock.  And we can’t tunnel out the side, without so much as a pin to help us dig, can we?  I think that just about settles things.  Ronicky, we can’t get out.”

“Suppose we had some dynamite,” said Ronicky cheerily.

“Sure, but we haven’t.”

“Suppose we find some?”

Jerry Smith groaned.  “Are you trying to make a joke out of this?  Besides, could we send off a blast of dynamite in a closed tunnel like this?”

“We could try,” said Ronicky.  “Way I’m figuring is to show you it’s bad medicine to sit down and figure out how you’re beat.  Even if you owe a pile of money they’s some satisfaction in sitting back and adding up the figures so that you come out about a million dollars on top—­in your dreams.  Before we can get out of here we got to begin to feel powerful sure.”

“But you take it straight, friend:  Fernand ain’t going to leave us in here.  Nope, he’s going to find a way to get us out.  That’s easy to figure out.  But the way he’ll get us out will be as dead ones, and then he can dump us, when he feels like it, in the river.  Ain’t that the simplest way of working it out?”